Youth League last 16 spot taken on penalties!

FC Red Bull Salzburg

·12 de febrero de 2025

Youth League last 16 spot taken on penalties!

Our youngsters hold their nerve

Our Youth League side kept their nerve to see off a battling Celtic side - as despite dominating, we needed a penalty shoot-out to seal our progress. Daniel Beichler's boys took a deserved spot in the next round thanks to a super save from Christian Zawieschitzky as well as some perfect penalty taking.

Match summary

Our side set the tone from the start, following on from their fantastic league stage campaign. Alexander Murillo got into shooting positions several times in the opening stages, and Lassina Traore tested Celtic goalkeeper Gill. The visitors rarely threatened in the first period while Phillip Verhounig, the top scorer in the current UEFA Youth League campaign - missed a big opportunity before the break to take the lead.

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Our boys were more of a threat at the Red Bull Football Academy after the restart, and duly got their reward. After Alexander Murillo was denied by Gill, substitute Johannes Moser tidied in from close range on his Youth League debut for 1-0 (56').

Further chances went unused and Celtic made us pay - after a full hour of rarely threatening, Ure smashed a free-kick from the edge of the area right into the top corner for 1-1 (68'). We were back to square one, even if Jakob Zangerl, Enrique Aguilar and Aboubacar Camara all had opportunities to win it in regular time, with the crossbar ultimately dashing those hopes.

It therefore fell to a penalty shoot-out to seal our fate, and our boys kept their nerve! Christian Zawieschitzky denied Cummings while Hussauf, Camara, Moser and Aguilar all struck for our boys. Our XI therefore make it into the last 16 after a nerve-wracking 96 minutes – plus penalties. The draw for that will be made on Friday at 13:00 CET.

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We are hugely relieved, of course. If you consider the whole match, it's hard to believe that we had to go to penalties after the number of chances we had. We then conceded from their only chance from a set-piece. The match didn't go our way at all, but we kept cool. We are deservedly going through - we know anything can happen on penalties. The boys did really well from the penalty spot, so we are super happy.

Daniel Beichler

Line-up

Zawieschitzky – Hussauf, Gadou (58' Brandtner), Mellberg (82' Avdic), Traore – Paumgartner, Sulzbacher, Trummer (46' Moser) – Murillo (79' Camara), Aguilar, Verhounig (58' Zangerl)